A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp.

Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious 12-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the 12-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto, pursued by the implacable constable.

Until I Find You: A Novel

When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead, has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or "scratcher".

A Widow for One Year

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character — a "difficult" woman. Her story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her, Ruth is only four. The second window into Ruth's life opens when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. The novel closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a 41-year-old widow and mother — and about to fall in love for the first time.

The Fourth Hand

Millions of television viewers witness a journalist lose his left-hand to a lion, triggering a nationwide race to find and deliver a hand transplant. John Irving's tenth novel promises more seamless storytelling and a penetrating look at the power of second chances.

The Imaginary Girlfriend

Dedicated to the memory of two wrestling coaches and two writer friends, The Imaginary Girlfriend is John Irving's candid memoir of his twin careers in writing and wrestling. The award-winning author of best-selling novels from The World According to Garp to In One Person, Irving began writing when he was 14, the same age at which he began to wrestle at Exeter. He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, was certified as a referee at 24, and coached the sport until he was 47.

A Son of the Circus

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.

The World According to Garp

Here are the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her times. Here are the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. The World According to Garp is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow", yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust.

The Cider House Rules

From one of America's most beloved and respected writers comes the classic story of Homer Wells, an orphan, and Wilbur Larch, a doctor without children of his own, who develop an extraordinary bond with one another.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.

Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.

Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)

Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.

John Irving Reads: The Pension Grillparzer

This story comes from The World According to Garp, a novel that established John Irving as one of the greatest writers of our time. "The Pension Grillparzer" is quintessential Irving - a self-contained story-within-a-story that, like the novel as a whole, tells a vivid and engaging tale. The Grillparzer Hotel, inhabited by odd circus performers including a bear and a frighteningly accurate teller of dreams, wants a better rating to attract more tourists, so it must undergo the scrutiny of the Austrian Tourist Bureau.

The Busy Body

Al Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the syndicate. And this was a delicate job that Rovito had given him: retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from the fresh grave of the drug mule who was accidentally buried wearing it. There was just one problem (at least - just one to begin with): It turned out the grave was empty. Suddenly Engel was the one finding himself “in deep”.

No Man's Nightingale: An Inspector Wexford Novel

A female vicar named Sarah Hussain is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. Maxine, the gossipy cleaning woman who finds the body, happens to also be in the employ of former Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford and his wife. When called on by his old deputy, Wexford, who has taken to reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a retirement project, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators. Wexford is intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, but he's also desperate to escape the chatty Maxine.

We Are Water: A Novel

After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist - has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets - dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy, never one to be conventional, took a very unconventional moral stance in this novel, which shocked readers of the time. In doing so, he created one of the great romantic novels of all time, the story of a striking and tragic heroine who came to life for the reader as she did for the author.

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras. During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worlds?

Giovanni's Room

Set in the 1950’s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

Blackbirds

Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

We Are Not Ourselves

Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed. When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit.

Wolf Winter

Swedish Lapland, 1717. Maija, her husband Paavo and her daughters Frederika and Dorotea arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms BlackAsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and our narrator, Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: that I was raised with a chimpanzee," she tells us. "It's never going to be the first thing I share with someone. I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren't thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern's expulsion, I'd scarcely known a moment alone. She was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half, and I loved her as a sister."

Publisher's Summary

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp.

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

I’m not a John Irving fan per say, so I do not have the insight into his writing that so many other reviewers commented on. At first I found the novel to be a little extreme, with just too many sexually diverse characters in the same small town, all related or connected in some way. Was there something in the drinking water? The quick introduction of one character after the next all gets sandwiched between Shakespearean plays that did nothing for me. I found it difficult to keep everyone straight (excuse the pun).

The narrator, Billy Abbott is a 70 year old man telling his coming of age story and describing his life and the people who come in, stay for a while, sometimes have sex in all different ways, and then leave. I did not feel an emotional attachment to any of the characters. I found them interesting and enjoyed watching them from afar, but never felt a connection to any of them. Not even Billy. Where’s the romance? There was no real, sink your teeth into, love story among any of these people. It was almost like the homosexual, bisexual, transgender, cross-dressing, questioning people of the world are in it for the sex only. I believe Irving was trying to make a point, to teach tolerance, but for me he missed the mark. Love is universal among any sexual preference and perhaps that’s how he should have made his connection.

The last third of the book hooked me far more. That’s when Billy’s friends started dying of aids. That’s when the real emotion came across. That feeling that hooks me into a book, that connects me to the characters was absent in most of this novel. Sorry all you John Irving fans, although it was good enough to keep me going, this one fell a little short for me.

Usually, Irving's timing is about a decade behind current events: Garp's women's equality, Owen Meany and the Viet Nam war, abortion and the Cider House Rules, but with In One Person he is the ram-rod pounding on the doors for the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) rights movement; he is bringing it all out of the dark corners, laying it on the table, and telling us "Don't look away!" What I've learned from reading Irving is that a decade of reflection, on even the most confrontational polarizing issues, gives us hindsight; it softens the edges. Perhaps Irving decided (at least concerning equality for LGBTQ) "what we need even more than hindsight or foresight is--insight" right now. My question is rather or not we come away from this novel with that insight.

Present in this novel are all of the Irving hallmarks you come to expect after you've read a few of his books: the writer, the older woman, a stay abroad, the wrestler, absent father, even a "bear" of sorts, and of course the sexuality, all embodied by larger than life Dickensonian characters that Irving does so wonderfully. But besides the fact that the men weren't men, the women weren't women, and the bears weren't bears, something was missing for me--the characters weren't believable, they weren't emotionally congruent, the town seemed quietly complicit then unaccepting, the women were empty or bitchy. AND then there is the sex...

I get that the challenge in reading this book is to look beyond our personal predilections, biasses, definitions, to grasp the message that is more important than our own comfort zones. Good at ya Mr. Irving for having the courage to write a thought provoking novel on this important issue...I'm one of your biggest fans and probably responsible for the sale of a couple hundred copies of A Prayer for Owen Meany....BUT...

I was so disappointed by the gratuitous and titallating way Irving treated the sex between the transgender, bisexual, gay people--as if it were just a crude physical act, promiscuous and raunchy, including an olfactory element (that added nothing to the political statement he was making); he discusses the bars, the bears, the bowels, the fists, the trolling, (and the "ballroom" vaginas) but none of the meaningful relationships, the love or committment--it ends up (npi) being nothing less than ugly pornography between vacuous licentious queens. Of course, the violence and hatred that we inflict upon those that don't share our personal predilections is uglier, and Irving almost redeems himself with a powerful and moving reflections of the AIDS epidemic and how the public turned it's back on the victims. (why I gave 3* instead of 2).

In One Person will probably be heralded by many as a beacon for change-a brave and thought provoking novel. It was my least favorite Irving novel; I almost didn't like it, and it is definitely not for anyone that is not comfortable with alternate sexuality presented in a very harsh manner. (I think even some of my LGBT friends will be disheartened by the portrayal.)So, did I come away with the insight intended?--I think so, but not with the eloquence usually offered by John Irving.

Oh I so love John Irving's work, I love his books that other people either have never heard of or didn't like. I so wanted to love this one too, but it fell short I thought. This book has it all.... an adorable cross dressing Grandpa(my favorite character), a coming of age good looking main character, a private boys school, a Norwegian who hunts deer on skis, lots of references to Shakespeare, details of many dying a slow painful death from aids, a fatal car accident, a crush on a step-father, an angry mother, an angry aunt, a transgender librarian who has sex with a child, gay bars, a trip to Europe, a missing absent father, a handsome sexy high school bully, gay sex, straight sex, transvestites, bisexuals, heterosexuals, a boy who slept with his mom, a funny story of meeting the love of a lifetime, narrow minded people, forward thinking people, oh and of course wrestlers and it is all set in my beautiful state Vermont. So what's not to like? Well I'm really not sure and as I write this review. I am finding it hard to articulate what I saw as the problem. I can say that maybe it was too much, too much wanting to make the point. Also I really couldn't wait for the book to end, I was pretty bored though much of the story. I am so disappointed. I think the premise is terrific, I can see how this book could have been wonderful and rich. But it just fell short. Somehow Irving missed the mark this time, it was like he was trying too hard. And I have to mention that I was bothered when the adult had sex (the Bill Clinton kind ) with a child and the focus of outrage was the fact that the adult was transgender, not the child abuse; this went unnoticed. So Mr. Irving I still love your work and I am so proud you live and work and write about our state, albeit fictional towns, so please give us another A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Fourth Hand, Cider House Rules....just be you... no need to try so hard, let it flow................

I have been a devoted fan of John Irving for decades. He has the rare talent needed to wrap hard issues in literate laughter. In One Person is Vintage Irving. His signature symbols and character types are all present. As in his earlier books, from Garp through Twisted River, Irving continues to address socio/political controversies thoughtfully and fearlessly.

The themes in this book remind us of Robert/Roberta the pro football player defender of Nurse Jenny, of Dr. Larch, the non-practicing homosexual who gave women choices and orphans second chances, of Frannie who learned how to live after gang rape, of Owen who tried to understand his religious parents as he lived out his own dream and even of the twisted multi-generational hatreds in Twisted River. And bears, of course.

It is set in a private boys (originally) school in New England where we are reminded of elderly professors freezing in the snow and of warm, padded wrestling rooms, and a year in Vienna. And while it is fun to encounter the archetypes from his previous books, the social and political questions still remain to be explored and confronted. As he carefully built his arguments for questioning the “status quo” opinions, social norms, natural morals and blind prejudices of earlier generations about prostitution, abortion, sexual orientation, women’s rights, racial justice, child abuse, the handicapped etc, he again argues for Questioning and questing and for sympathy. In Irving’s words, don’t categorize me before you even know me. He asks for tolerance, even for tolerance of the intolerant. To all of this, add Irving’s tragicomIc writing genius and his story telling skills and we have another thoughtful provocative John Irving book. It’s great!

This is another book that makes me wish that we had a book club for discussion. It's courageous, readable, passionate and it's difficult to put down. And, as always with John Irving, it's easy to read, familiar, intimate even. If I didn't give it a full 5-star rating, it's because I want the main character to be a straight arrow (pardon the unintended pun), an advocate for those who live non-heterosexual lives, someone who is unimpeachable. But Bill Abbott is a bit self-centered.... Here is a man for whom others have risked and lost a lot to fight for him and he makes no effort to see them again, to seek them out. Even at the bed side of a dying man, he will be the star.That said, many in his circle of friends and relatives are wonderful. They are the bricks of this powerful story.

John Irving treats his characters with respect. This is not voyuerism or sniggering in an alley at outrageous behaviour, it is an honest, funny and human treatment of a life that needs to be met on its own terms. I love this author and Mr. Hickey does a great job with the material. This is a great an worthwhile listen.

As with previous reviews, not for those offended by strong sexuality. Some of the jumping around at points within the narrator's life got confusing--I realize future happenings related to things in the past, but sometimes difficult to place things in a line.

I thought the pace of the story was quick and succinct, and the narration was well done. Of course there are great characters, the hallmark of Irving.

Point of contention with a previous reviewer. A complaint was made about a sexual encounter between a younger and older person (trying not to be a spoiler), and that this "abuse of a minor" was the key issue, rather than gender issues. I would like to point out that the youger person was 18 at the time, but still living with parents. I don't believe this constitutes sexual abuse legally or otherwise.

There were moments when the story and it's quirky characters reminded me of some of Irving's best work, like A Prayer for Owen Meany, or The World According to Garp or Cider House Rules. Other times the story was unbelievably boring, repetative and just sort of dumb. I did finish the book after a couple false stops and starts and the main characters have found a place in my heart----something Irving is very good at doing. But I can't help but think the novel could have been so much better than it was, and there were times when I felt that Irving was just having the reader on, so to speak, not serious about this or that development or bit of narrative, as if he was wasting my time all but intentionally. Still, the social commentary behind the novel is worthwhile and the story does finally come through.

I'm writing this review having set this book down. I did not set it down due to the subject matter, which is heavey on homoeroticism and transgender or LGBT subjects. That wasnt' the problem. I've read many of John Irving's books and enjoyed them condsiderably. His "thing" of self-reference and repetition of characters, places, and themes works for a suite of novels, but here, it just seems tired. He revisits his self-stated practice as a "re-qriter" to a fault, and it just seems self-indulgent, tired, and to be quite frank, boring. Irving is an excellent writer, and his voice is quite clear here. To those who are fans of his turns of phrase, and character creations, they may enjoy this novel. Where this novel lacks is in a dynamic narrative. It is much more or a character study than his other novels, but it seems to ask of the reader to care in the same way about a number of characters across a great breadth of time. I don't care. He didn't make me care. I found his characters uninteresting and the narrative totally flat. booooooooooo.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from In One Person?

Irving jumped too quickly into his sage places of both character and setting to deal with a difficult subject. I found his description of the bisexual experience and the description of the historical LGBT to be well researched, but totally disingenusous.

Any additional comments?

"Over-reach" is an easy descriptor for this and some of Irving's other books. He has some fantastic novels, but is not ifallible. This book is falling heavy upon the success of "The World According to Gap", and "Hotel New Hampshire", and has nothing on them. As an extension of that, while Irving has proven in his bnovels that rewriting and revisiting memesc can work, it just makes him semm lazy and self indulgent in this one.

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